There are intellectual reasons as well as bottom-line reasons. Intellectually, economics offers a unique combination of social concerns – study of issues such as employment and growth, inflation, globalization, health, and poverty – and scientific methods – rigorous theoretical and statistical analysis. In bottom-line terms, although Economics at Princeton is regarded and taught as part of a liberal-arts education, not as a preparation for a specific vocation, it does provide an especially relevant background for careers in business and government and graduate study in economics, public policy, business administration, and law. Finally, the economics major is particularly easy to combine with the finance certificate – the core courses of one can be used as departmental electives in the other.

One of the best ways to decide whether a particular major is a good fit for you is to look at the variety and depth of independent research conducted by its undergraduate students. We encourage you to browse over some of the research conducted by our seniors in recent years. The full set of senior theses submitted to the Department of Economics from 1927-present are archived at Princeton University’s Mudd Library: http://dataspace.princeton.edu/jspui/handle/88435/dsp013n203z151

For the Class of 2015 onwards, the Economics prerequisites are ECO 100 (Microeconomics), 101 (Macroeconomics), and ECO 202 (Statistics and Data Analysis for Economics). You can place out of these if you have 5 grades in AP exams in the respective subjects, or equivalent international qualifications (A on the completed British A-level exam or 7 on the higher level IB exam). At Princeton, ORF 245 (Fundamentals of Engineering Statistics) is the only generally acceptable substitute for ECO 202. MAT 175 is the minimum mathematics requirement. You are only exempt from this pre-requisite if you have already taken an acceptable university level multivariate calculus courses while you were still in high school. You can fulfill our microeconomics and macroeconomics prerequisites with pre-approved summer courses elsewhere; see our memo on Outside Courses for details. The Statistics requirement cannot be satisfied with summer courses taken after the student has begun his/her studies at Princeton, except in unusual circumstances approved by the Departmental Representative.

If you plan to take math-track econometrics (ECO 312), upper level finance certificate courses (such as ECO 462, ECO 465 and ECO 466) or pursue graduate studies in Economics or Finance you should take MAT 201 and 202 instead of MAT 175.

All prerequisite courses must be taken for letter-grade credit, and you must get grades of C or better in each, to qualify for admission to an economics major. All requirements must be met by the end of your second year. You will not be permitted to take any of these courses in your junior year as an economics major.

You must successfully complete [1] three “core” courses, microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics, [2] at least five electives from the upper-level offerings of the department, [3] junior independent work and a senior thesis, and [4] the departmental comprehensive examination given at the end of your senior year. All departmental courses must be taken for grades, not PDF. Each must be passed individually with a grade of D or better, and the average of the grades on the components [1]-[4], calculated using a weighting scheme posted on the department’s website, must be C or better.

The core courses are offered at two levels, called the less-math track (ECO 300, 301, and 302) and the more-math-track (ECO 310, 311, and 312). The latter takes you closer to the research literature in modern economics; this can be an advantage when doing your independent work and thesis. Each year, approximately half of our majors choose each track. You can take some of your core courses in one track and the rest in the other track. Some of our upper-class elective courses have one or more of the more-math-track core courses as prerequisites; others don’t.

Up to two of the electives can be substituted by a preapproved “cognate” from another department. Such a course has to be more than merely of interest to you or a useful complement to your economics courses; in such circumstances you can always choose it as a part of your distributional courses. To be a cognate, a course must in addition have a substantial content of theoretical or empirical economic analysis.

You should have planned well ahead and taken the appropriate core courses of the economics major during your sophomore year. We approve core courses taken elsewhere only in very exceptional circumstances, and only if they are of comparable standards and taken at institutions of comparable quality. We will not allow you to postpone core courses to the senior year. Please see Prof. Smita Brunnermeier as soon possible to discuss your situation.

Other than in study-abroad programs taken over the course of a full academic semester or year, economics courses taken at other universities may not be used to fulfill Economics Department requirements. An economics course taken at another university may be pre-approved by the Departmental Representative to serve as an Economics prerequisite, or to remedy a course deficiency in meeting university requirements of re-admission for non-ECO students on leave of absence. Furthermore, we only pre-approve transfer credit for summer courses equivalents of ECO 100 and ECO 101 regardless of whether they are taken domestically or abroad.

Our Undergraduate Program Administrator, Christina Lipsky, should be able to answer most of your questions pertaining to pre-requisites and rules and can direct you to the appropriate faculty or staff for the rest. Her office is in 114 Julis Romo Rabinowitz Bldg, office hours 9 am – 5 pm each business day.

In addition, Prof. Smita Brunnermeier can advise you on course selection, cognates, missing pre-requisites, summer course pre-approval and study abroad. Please sign up for an appointment on https://wass.princeton.edu if you would like to meet with her. Her office is in 228 Julis Romo Rabinowitz Bldg.